My last name is pronounced shi-LAD-ee (roughly rhymes with beef patty). I love puns, cacti, eating out, and good punctuation in text messages. I'm a lifelong Latter-day Saint and I'm gay.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Perfectly Single

Four years ago my life was
less than ideal. Actually, it kind of stunk. I was just rereading my journal
from 2012 and 2013 and boy did I complain a lot. For example, take a look at this
entry from 11 February 2013: “I kind of snapped at Kevin last night. He kept
talking to me about Allison and how happy he was and I was just feeling crappy.
His happiness just made me feel worse. I went to bed feeling pretty sorry for
myself. I felt like Eliza from My Fair
Lady when she exclaimed, ‘What’s to become of me?’ I just felt lost and sad
and hopeless and I may have cried a little.” If you think I sound gay for
quoting a musical, you should read the next paragraph of that journal entry in
which I quote Anne Shirley.

Kevin was my roommate at the
time and he was dating my friend Allison who he later married. They’re two of
my very favorite people and in hindsight I’m embarrassed that I couldn’t just
be happy for them. Unfortunately, I was too caught up in my own singleness to
be happy that they had found love. I was lonely and sad and I feared that I
would be alone forever.

What’s interesting is that as
I’ve gotten to know more and more gay Mormons I hear the same story and over
and over again. While everyone’s story is unique, I’ve heard this same
sentiment dozens and dozens of time: “I just don’t want to be alone forever.”
The kind of people I hear say this are typically gay men who have tried to date
women for years with no success. They love Mormonism and want to stay in the
church, but doing so means that they either have to marry a woman or stay
single. Since marriage to a woman is unappealing and hasn’t worked the only
option left is to remain single if they want to fully participate in the
church. In their eyes, they will be alone forever. I totally get this because I’ve
felt the same way.

When a gay friend tells me
that they don’t want to be alone forever I often say something like this: “Just
because you’re single doesn’t mean you have to be alone. You don’t need a
relationship to be happy. You’re not half of whole. You don’t need another
person to complete you.” And if I’m talking to someone who identifies as a feminist
I’ll say, “You’re a feminist and you’re telling me you need a man to be happy?!”
I’m not sure saying any of this has ever been helpful, but I’ll continue saying
it anyway.

I’ve said the phrase, “You’re
not half of a whole, you can be whole just how you are,” enough times that I
decided to see if it was true. Over the last week I’ve been searching the
scriptures to answer this question: What makes me whole and complete? I feel
like the Mormon culture makes us single people feel that to be complete we need
to be married. I’d like to share a few of the things that I wish Ben from four
years ago had understood.

The first scripture I
explored was Matthew 5:48, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which
is in heaven is perfect.” Anyone who paid attention in Sunday School will know
that perfect means “complete,
finished, fully developed.” In other words, to be perfect is to be whole. The
five verses preceding verse 48 all deal with how we treat other people. Verse
44, for example, says, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good
to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and
persecute you.” As I’ve pondered these verses I’ve understood them to mean that
if you want to be whole you need to forgive, you need to love, and you need to
do good to everyone. In essence, our wholeness is contingent on how we treat
other people. Have you ever been mad at someone or something and a friend says
to you, “Dude, just let it go and move on”? I’ve been told that and I’ve said it,
too (but without the word dude, of
course). Mormonism at its core is about progression. If you aren’t forgiving
people you aren’t moving on. You are stopping your own progression. As J.K.
Rowling has said, “If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he
treats his inferiors, not his equals.” How we treat others matters very much.

Principle 1: I am whole when I
treat people in a Christlike way (especially if they don’t deserve it).

The next verses that touched
me were Matthew 19:20-21. This is when a rich young man approaches Jesus and
asks what he needs to do to receive eternal life. The Savior tells him to keep
the commandments and the rich young man is like, “I keep all those commandments
already.” And then he asks, “What lack I yet?” In other words, what’s keeping
me from being whole? And Christ tells him to give all he has to the poor, but the
rich guy just can’t do that and walks away feeling sad and still incomplete.

So what’s the principle here?
I’m whole when I give all my stuff away? No, I think it’s deeper than that. I
think that each of us needs to have the courage to ask, “What lack I yet? What
am I missing?” And then have the courage to do that thing. Here’s an example
from my life.

Not long after I wrote the
journal entry at the beginning of this post I was feeling super-sad that I was
single (that feeling was actually pretty constant in my life for a number of
years). As I was driving home from work one day I was praying and expressing to
God my frustrations. I pleaded, “Why can’t I just have a family?” I soon felt
this answer, “Ben, you already have a family.” And that response was true, I
have a great family. I have parents, siblings, nieces and nephews and they’re
all just great. I realized that I was already part of an eternal family and
that instead of longing for something I didn’t have I should improve the
relationships that I already had.

Hanging out with my gay Mormon friendsmakes me feel whole

Now, this next part is going
to sound crazy to Mormons, but it was important for me. Over the next few years
I learned that I had to get rid of the dream I had of marrying a woman in the
temple. It had been causing me pain and sadness and it was time for a new
dream, a dream that was a better fit for me. I asked God, “What lack I yet?”
and through a line upon line process I knew that there was a work God had for
me to do. I needed my gay brothers and sisters and they needed me. And so I
reached out and formed a little support group of LGBT Mormons. Now I have a
little family in Tucson that I love as if they were my actual family. I wrote
about how that all happened in my last post. I thought that the only way to be
happy was to be married to a woman, but I feel like I was mistaken.

For example, Jesus Christ is
our perfect example, right? He was baptized even though He was sinless to “set the
example” for us (2 Nephi 31:9). His baptism is mentioned in multiple places in
the scriptures because He did it to show us the way. If marriage was so
important for me right now wouldn’t He have set the example for me by getting
married? (I wrote some more thoughts on marriage and the Plan of Happiness in
this post.) The Savior’s familial relationship that is most emphasized in the
scriptures is His relationship with His mother as well as His constant striving
to do His Father’s will. The scriptures are bursting with stories of how Christ
treated everyone with love and respect, especially those that were sick,
different, or on the fringes of society. Jesus showed us how love can be
universal instead of exclusive. For me, the thing I lacked was reaching out. I
was feeling so lonely and sad that I failed to realize that there were other
lonely and sad people, too. Once I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started
looking outward things got way better. In fact, I think I’m in the best place I’ve
ever been.

Principle 2: I’m whole when I
have the courage to do God’s will.

I love what the Doctrine and
Covenants teaches about light. Section 93 is one of my absolute favorites. But
D&C 50:24 teaches an important principle, too. It reads, “That which is of
God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth
more light and that light growth brighter and brighter until the perfect day.”
Remember how we agreed that perfect means
to complete and whole? Well, I haven’t reached the perfect day yet, but I will
if I continue in God and continue receiving more light. God has promised all of
us further light and knowledge and to receive it we need to use the knowledge
He has already given us and seek for more.

Principle 3: I become whole
as I receive more light.

I found a lot of great
scriptures about what it means to be whole, but I’ll just share one more thought. Moroni 10:32 says that “by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ…”
And referring to those who will attain a celestial glory, D&C 76:69 says, “These
are they who are just men made perfect through Jesus the mediator of the new
covenant…” In the end, it’s not so much about what I do that will make me
whole, it’s about what Christ did. A spouse won’t complete me, but the grace of
God will. The relationship that will make me perfect isn’t the one I have with
a significant other, but the one I have with Jesus.

Principle 4: I am made whole
through grace.

If I could talk to the me of
four years ago I would ask him these questions: How do you treat other people?
Is there something you feel prompted to do that you haven’t had the courage to
do yet? What are you doing to receive more light? What role does grace have in your life? I think if he really thought
about it he would realize that he was looking for happiness in some of the
wrong places. And then I would encourage him to follow the promptings of the
Holy Ghost and his own moral compass and live the life he felt inspired to
live. And I would tell him to not make any decisions based on fear (which is
what I did for way too long).

I love traditional marriages
and families and I believe that they are essential to God’s plan. However, I
think that marriage to a woman isn’t the right thing for me at this point in my
life. And while I’m very content with my life, I would not prescribe it for
every gay Mormon. We all need to figure out what course is right for us. As
Joseph Smith taught, “That which is wrong under one circumstance,
may be, and often is, right under another. God said, 'Thou shalt not kill'; at
another time He said, 'Thou shalt utterly destroy.' This is the principle on
which the government of heaven is conducted—by revelation adapted to the
circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God
requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason
thereof till long after the events transpire.” I feel that I’ve received revelation on how to live my life and I hope
that everyone else will do the same.

I’ve heard many people say things
like, “My wife is my rock,” or “Nothing has brought me greater joy than raising
my kids.” These sentiments are great and no longer make me feel left out because
I’ve found my own rock and my own things that bring me joy. I know people who
appear to have great marriages as well as people who feel burdened by their
marriage. I also know people who are single and sad and people who are single
and thriving. That’s because it’s not our relationship status that completes
us. It is who we are becoming that completes us. However, I still get
criticized regularly by Mormons and by people in the LGBT community for
choosing to stay single. I get it, you have a great life and want me to have a
great life, too. But instead of prescribing marriage to me as a way to be
whole, I’d prefer you to ask me about my relationship with God. Am I thriving?
Am I living a life that brings me joy? Am I driven by a purpose that’s greater
than myself? I wish that instead of telling me to find a partner that you would
ask me these sorts of questions instead.

Yes, I’m single, but I feel
perfectly happy and whole just the way I am.

You put perfectly into words what I've been trying to put my finger on months. Society sometimes teaches that to live authentically, we need a romantic relationship (gay or straight). This will never be true for me.

This is beautiful. Thank you for your faith. I feel like you've cut to the essence of what truly makes us happy, regardless of our situation. We can always control all of the variables you mention that lead to our happiness.